Windows Home Server Code Name "Vail" public preview announced

After reading this thread, I am very excited for "Vail", but some of the DE changes makes me a sad panda.

I take comfort in knowing if my WHS v1 goes tits up, I can still yank the drives out and access all of my data from any Windows machine. Now in WHS v2, that machine not only needs to be another "Vail" server, but I need to have ALL of the drives connected to truly get anything.

Additionally, since everything is going to be striped anyway, it seems like it would be nice if the stripes were much smaller, like in the megabytes, so that a speed increase could be had that is closer to RAID 0. All the drawbacks of the RAID 0-like stripes are there; why not the performance?

-Cool-
 
I read in one of the MS threads that the new DE uses a driver file. Is it possible that if this file is present on any other Windows PC that it could read the new DE drives?
 
Have the devs said anything about upgrading from WHS v1 to v2? I know that obviously you can't do any sort of OS upgrade, since it's 32 bit to 64 bit, but I mean more in terms of being able to pop all the drives from a v1 install into a new v2 install, and have WHS automatically convert it without losing any data. I guess it probably won't be possible and the data will have to be migrated manually, but it'd be nice if there is going to be a way.
 
I'm going to bet that either microsoft will release the driver, or someone will get it working in 2008 R2 or Windows 7 before long. It makes a ton of sense to do this on a consumer product.
 
mpeg4v3 said:
Have the devs said anything about upgrading from WHS v1 to v2? I know that obviously you can't do any sort of OS upgrade, since it's 32 bit to 64 bit, but I mean more in terms of being able to pop all the drives from a v1 install into a new v2 install, and have WHS automatically convert it without losing any data. I guess it probably won't be possible and the data will have to be migrated manually, but it'd be nice if there is going to be a way.
Click to expand...

As of now the data will have to be migrated manually.
There will not be an upgrade path due to the 32bit ---> 64bit OS.

There has been discussion of a data migration tool, but it would not be faster than manually doing it.
would really just be a scripted copy/paste process.
 
pjkenned said:
I'm going to bet that either microsoft will release the driver, or someone will get it working in 2008 R2 or Windows 7 before long. It makes a ton of sense to do this on a consumer product.
Click to expand...

Yea its just a matter of time before someone figures out how to do it.
 
pjkenned

Can you try and add a volume larger than 2TB to the WHS data pool?
in the prior builds it did not work, but ive heard that it does now.
 
Let me see if I can do it remotely. Been working long hours w/ work dinners :-/

Update: RDC to the 2k8R2 Server is down :-/ hopefully it is just chugging on something.
 
Last edited:
Archer75 said:
Internally, the “Vail” software has been tested with up to 16 hard drives and with up to 16 TB of total storage capacity. We’re aware of a number of bugs that occur beyond these limits, so please keep your beta installations under 16 drives and 16 TB total drive space.
Click to expand...

"f*cksake man you're amateur" -- Christian Bale
 
Impulse said:
Whoa, I read a Vail preview/review that stated disks are not readable anymore when they're taken from the WHS system and plugged into any regular Windows rig... What/how are they formatted in then? Is that true or was the reviewer just off his rocker? Seems like they're throwing the baby out w/the bathwater there, this was one of the more convenient features of WHS if you ask me...
Click to expand...

Not just convenient, but absolutely required if you ever tried to do a server recovery and the WHS installer just refused to recognized the drive pool for unknown reasons of its own. This happened to me on several occasions and the only way to recover was to manually copy the files off each individual drive and slowly rebuild the pool.
 
nitrobass24 said:
Whats the advantage to using a SSD on a filerserver?
Click to expand...

Well... in a "fileserver" it makes a lot of sense if you have some intelligent caching. Big storage vendors, Adaptec, and ZFS for example all do this... but WHS doesn't use SSD's this way.

The one good thing about a SSD that I can see is that you have a lot of flexibility mounting it in a Norco RPC-4220 or RPC-4020.
 
pjkenned said:
Well... in a "fileserver" it makes a lot of sense if you have some intelligent caching. Big storage vendors, Adaptec, and ZFS for example all do this... but WHS doesn't use SSD's this way.

The one good thing about a SSD that I can see is that you have a lot of flexibility mounting it in a Norco RPC-4220 or RPC-4020.
Click to expand...

maybe i phrased my question wrong. I know things like ZFS and "big storage" there is a use for it.

But what is the use for WHS (since this is what the thread is about) or even just regular home rolled Areaca RAID6 on Server 2008.
 
Right now in my WHS v1 if I lose 3 drives out of my 8 drive pool (all at the same time) I can still salvage whatever I have left on the remaining 5 drives.

With WHS v2 can I still do this, or is the all the remaining data lost due to the way DE2 is now implemented?

Thanks in advance.
 
All of the following is for files stored in a share that is not duplicated.

From what I can gather, any file that is over 1GB will be stored on more than one drive. For your setup, files that are more than 7GB in size will have a chunk stored on all 8 of your drives. This means if you had a 10GB video, and a single drive were to fail, and you did not have duplication turned on for that video, the video is now UNRECOVERABLE!

Bottom Line:
1. For files less than 1GB in size, the risk of data loss due to a single drive failure may be no more than WHS v1.
2. For files larger than 1GB, the risk of data loss due to a single drive failure is more than WHS v1, as 2 or more drives are required to contain a full copy of the file.

Again, this is for files stored in a share that is not duplicated. Duplicating a share protects data from these pitfalls.

-Cool-
 
nitrobass24 said:
maybe i phrased my question wrong. I know things like ZFS and "big storage" there is a use for it.

But what is the use for WHS (since this is what the thread is about) or even just regular home rolled Areaca RAID6 on Server 2008.
Click to expand...



1 major benefit I see

Reliability: SSDs are more reliable than spinning disks which for a 24/7 server like a WHS is important...

also since WHS does not support RAID 1 for the OS drive a SSD would alleviate some of the risk associated with a single OS drive



there might be some benefit of indexing media.... but I am not sure.
 
Cool1Net6 said:
All of the following is for files stored in a share that is not duplicated.

From what I can gather, any file that is over 1GB will be stored on more than one drive. For your setup, files that are more than 7GB in size will have a chunk stored on all 8 of your drives. This means if you had a 10GB video, and a single drive were to fail, and you did not have duplication turned on for that video, the video is now UNRECOVERABLE!

Bottom Line:
1. For files less than 1GB in size, the risk of data loss due to a single drive failure may be no more than WHS v1.
2. For files larger than 1GB, the risk of data loss due to a single drive failure is more than WHS v1, as 2 or more drives are required to contain a full copy of the file.

Again, this is for files stored in a share that is not duplicated. Duplicating a share protects data from these pitfalls.

-Cool-
Click to expand...

thats not necessarily true. Just because a file is larger than 1 gb doesnt mean that it will be spread across drives. It could be, but doesnt have to be.

Also DE2 is still under heavy development, and we will see plenty of changes before RC.
 
nitrobass24 said:
pjkenned

Can you try and add a volume larger than 2TB to the WHS data pool?
in the prior builds it did not work, but ive heard that it does now.
Click to expand...

It works. Will post more about it later. Just passed a 3.7TB+ volume in. Not too bad getting it to work decently. Hint: Don't set the Hitachi's at 4K drives :)
 
nitrobass24 said:
thats not necessarily true. Just because a file is larger than 1 gb doesnt mean that it will be spread across drives. It could be, but doesnt have to be.

Also DE2 is still under heavy development, and we will see plenty of changes before RC.
Click to expand...

Good point, there is a chance that a file will reside in its entirety on a single drive, but then what's the point of having the 1GB chunks if you aren't even going to spread them across multiple volumes?

And your right; DE2 and WHS v2 is a work in progress, and we will most likely see big changes before RC.

-Cool-
 
Cool1Net6 said:
Good point, there is a chance that a file will reside in its entirety on a single drive, but then what's the point of having the 1GB chunks if you aren't even going to spread them across multiple volumes?

And your right; DE2 and WHS v2 is a work in progress, and we will most likely see big changes before RC.

-Cool-
Click to expand...

i think 1gb is just an arbitrary number they chose. its large enough to where lots of data will reside in a single chunk and that even larger data will reside on the same drive. At the same time 1gb is small enough to move around easily.
 
Another update, passed a 7.5TB (6.9TB+ usable) array into Vail alongside the 3.7TB volume.
 
benogil said:
I didn't see this linked, so I thought it might be of interest -
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/whsvailbeta/thread/32844aae-9f41-41cb-8a4a-f6c26ddfdd6f
Click to expand...

From the link:

To protect against silent storage errors (bit flips, misdirected writes, torn writes), additional information is appended to each 512-byte sector stored on drive. In particular, each sector is protected by a CRC checksum, which enables Drive Extender to detect data read errors, perform realtime error correction and self-healing (up to 2 bit errors per sector if duplication is disabled, and any number of bit errors if duplication is enabled) and report the errors back to the user and application. The overhead for this additional data is roughly 12% of drive space.
Click to expand...

Uh oh. I wonder how this is going to play with the new advanced format drives?
 
Well after playing around a bit more i am continuing to find myself more disappointed.
I was hoping that i could make WHS be *THE* server, but unfortunately they have removed some features from 2008 that really make a big difference for me.

Ability to use it as an AD server is gone
Hyper-v Gone


Guess WHS will still just be a VM for now.
 
The extra protection for bit flips sounds like a great idea, especially with today's super high density hard drives. Does the new ECC feature in WHS Vail make having ECC ram pointless then? Does it correct only read errors on the disk, or is it applicable to writes as well?
 
nitrobass24 said:
Well after playing around a bit more i am continuing to find myself more disappointed.
I was hoping that i could make WHS be *THE* server, but unfortunately they have removed some features from 2008 that really make a big difference for me.

Ability to use it as an AD server is gone
Hyper-v Gone


Guess WHS will still just be a VM for now.
Click to expand...

WHS runs great in Hyper-V though... and even better than WHS V1. No reason not to just put the Hyper-V Server on any WHS box then install WHS v2 on there. Realistically, if you are using a decent dual core or better (i.e. better than a low end Athlon 64 or Atom) there is plenty of power to run something else on the same box.
 
Yea but the virtual SCSI interface (require for direct disk access is CPU sensitive) Thus running CPU intensive task on the Host, makes for slow network transfers to the WHS.
 
Here what I hate with V2,

The fact that the share folders like music videos ect cant be deleted or disabled (like v1) and the new hard drive system which I liked v1. As of right now that is the KILLER for me to even buy/use this OS.
 
benogil said:
I didn't see this linked, so I thought it might be of interest -
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/whsvailbeta/thread/32844aae-9f41-41cb-8a4a-f6c26ddfdd6f
Click to expand...

That is a great thread, and everyone should read it, especially if you are playing with the Beta and can offer some input.

There's also a list of desired features on Connect, if you want to see one of these features in Vail, do your part and vote it up!

https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/Feedback

Most Up-Voted Active Suggestions
1. Can we please have a Security Essentials version & Add-in for WHS?
2. Windows Home Server Code Name Vail drives should be readable on non-Vail computers
3. I would like to have Media Center in WHS!
4. Automate Home Server Backup
5. Integrate WHS as Hub/Relay for Mesh/OneCare/Live
Click to expand...
 
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